Yesterday while describing outsider templates I described a little about how I picture spell-like abilities working. This was something that I expected to give me a lot of trouble, but it turns out that the Tome (collecting articles and other writing by Frank Trollman and K [another Keith, I understand, …
I’ve been working on an examination and analysis of outsiders (brought about by trying to describe Babau in Echelon), and frankly it’s going to take more time than I have tonight. Instead, I thought I’d present a few templates that basically fell out of that analysis. Templates in Echelon Templates, …
A few weeks ago I described how to reconstruct a demon, specifically a Babau, to better fit its textual description as a sneak. This was in part to make a creature that could be more easily adapted to other roles as well. Now that Echelon’s a little more developed, I …
Three things learned today: People are reading these articles, with a critical eye. I can blow it sometimes. … I evidently can’t count to three, because I forgot the last one. Comments Received I’ve seen comments about yesterday’s post that include the following: Damage Reduction is way too high, especially …
I’ve written before about saving throw talents, and there is a talent to improve a character’s Dexterity, but I haven’t yet discussed much how to help keep a character from getting hurt in a fight. I have not yet run numbers on this, so this is greatly subject to change. …
I think I’ll do a quick and simple one today. Sneak attack allows a character to do additional damage to a distracted or otherwise unaware opponent. A person with the sneak attack ability may do additional damage with his weapons when he attacks someone who is flatfooted or otherwise denied …
The rules I drafted for Eldritch Weaving and Martial Disciplines both looked workable when I wrote them. When I compared the results, though, I found they didn’t feel quite equivalent to me. Among the differences, I think that the buy-in cost for martial disciplines is higher than for eldritch weaving; …
In 2005 Malhavoc Press published Iron Heroes, written by Mike Mearls as a variant Player’s Handbook. This supplement and setting focused on martial characters, with only minor support for spellcasters and other arcanists. A great deal of work went into making for more cinematic combat in D&D, where low-level combatants …
Polymorph and wildshape (limited target form polymorph) have long had problems in D&D. I don’t remember what the problems were in AD&D, but I remember that in D&D 3.x there were problems with the choice of target form, how exactly to apply the polymorph, and the escalation caused by ever-increasing …
Previous editions had some real problems with multiclass characters. In some cases they didn’t exist (BECMI, ignoring the ‘prestige’ versions of the classes), were way too effective while at the same time being strictly structured (AD&D), or tended to pretty much cripple multiclass characters unless various patches and workarounds were …